The Truth About Cats & Dogs
by solongsolonggonebabygone
Summary: Crackfic, Season 2 AU, One Shot. When Tony and Kate are accidentally exposed to DNA altering bioterrorist gas, the team is stuck dealing with the consequences when things get a little...hairy.


This, my friends, is crack-fic of the highest degree. Pure, 100-percent Grade-A _crack._ I literally stayed up for almost twenty-four hours straight when I had this idea and began writing it down, so that should tell you something. In short, this fic...is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S, is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S…

Well, I think you get the point.

Also, just as an FYE, this is set in season 2, certainly not because I have any dislike for season 3 or Ziva David's character (because I don't), but rather because this scenario only really works when Kate's involved. Also, probably because there's really no way to do this with Ziva without someone getting horribly maimed as a result.

NCIS and its characters do not belong to me, and after seeing what I've put them through in here that's probably for the better. Mr. Bellisario, I know I promised to return them in the same as condition as when I borrowed them, but…well, I really am _terribl_y sorry.

I would like to blame my lovely bestest of best true friends forevah and alwaysMachi-Neko for listening patiently to me at eight o'clock on a Saturday morning as I blathered this out, laughing, and actually _encouraging_ me to write this nightmare. I would also like to blame my dear online buddy, most helpful critic, and occasionally very talented beta Meredith44 for reading this and telling me to, _sure_, go right on ahead and post it here for all to see.

It's all their fault. And totally, totally not mine.

* * *

Sometimes, Tony worried about just what exactly it was that he had come to regard as the definitions for "normal" life. 

Then again, normal _was_ a relative term (or so he had been told), and working as a federal agent did tend to lead into some pretty bizarre happenings.

Like, for example, inadvertently discovering a bioterrorist plot to wipe out half the tri-county area with a molecularly corrosive gas, getting into a drawn-out and very messy turf war with the FBI over who got to handle the case, and then speeding down the highway at what had to be well over a hundred miles an hour in an unmarked car to get to the gas canister before it unleashed it's deadly cargo. For him, that was normal.

Finding the gas canister just in time, clearing the surrounding area, and then suddenly having it explode and release a cloud of noxious fumes over him and his admittedly lovely if more than mildly irritating female partner and causing them both to pass out, however; that was _not_ normal.

No, the word for that particular series of events would have had to be "today".

All of this flitted briefly through Tony's mind in those first hazy moments of regained consciousness, during which he was able to conclude two things. One, he appeared to be lying on some sort of hospital bed, and two, he must have fallen down pretty damn hard when he passed out because right now he was experiencing pain in places he didn't even know he had.

Well thank God the ground had been there to break his fall, otherwise things might've gotten _really_ messy.

"Ugh." Tony groaned, sitting up slowly and rubbing a hand over his still-closed eyes.

"Tony!" The sound of footsteps hurriedly rushing over to stand beside his bed didn't help the throbbing pain in his head any, and he gave a mild back of the throat growl in irritation, which for some reason came out huskier than usual. "You're awake!" The voice was breathless and practically high-pitched with frantic worry. Tony furrowed his brow deep in concentration and finally identified it as McGee's.

"A-are…are you okay?" McGee stuttered. Tony could just see the wide-eyed panicky look on his face already.

Just what he needed after being painfully knocked unconscious by a wave of potentially lethal gas: the geek having a coronary and exploding all over him, possibly getting blood on his new shirt. Which, come to think of it, was probably already ruined from the part where Tony had starting fading out and fallen forward, bringing a whole new world of definition to the term "face-plant".

Today, Tony concluded, was just apparently thoroughly determined to hand him his own ass.

"Just peachy," Tony managed to grunt in reply, still kneading the skin on his face with his fingertips. Was it his imagination, or were his fingers more callused than usual? "What happened?"

McGee swallowed so loud as to be audible. Never a good sign. Either twenty people were dead, or Gibbs was out of his mind and ready to rip somebody a new one. Possibly both, with the twenty dead people being innocent bystanders foolish enough to try and get in the former Marine's way.

"The, uh, gas canister had a failsafe on it," McGee explained nervously. "It went off shortly after we evacuated the building."

"Crap," Tony sighed wearily, grimacing at the mental image he was getting of the look that was most likely on Gibbs' face.

"Luckily, all the base personnel got out in time," McGee assured him quickly. There was a pause, and the junior agent sounded particularly cotton-mouthed when next he spoke. "But, uh…"

"Out with it, Probie," Tony barked, not in the mood for this right now. He could _feel_ McGee's wince, and it cheered him up just enough to bring the faintest of smiles to his face, if only for a moment. "Just tell me what happened already."

"Well, you see, you and Kate were, um…" Another audible gulp. "Exposed. To the, uh, molecular gas."

"Exposed?" Tony's eyes snapped open in fear, his stomach twisting and reeling like it would love nothing more than to forcibly crawl up his throat and introduce itself to the rest of the world. "What does that mean?"

"Oh, you're not going to die," McGee quickly assured him.

"You're not even _sick_," Abby suddenly chimed in. Tony's eyes flicked over to where she had been standing silently against the wall, hands folded neatly in front of her. "Not technically, anyway." Her expression was oddly out of place for their surroundings, even for Abby. She seemed…_amused._ And maybe Tony was just imagining it, but there was something weird about the way she was looking at him too, like she just couldn't stop _staring_ at him.

Not that he wasn't used to evoking that sort of response from most women, of course. Abby just wasn't usually one of them.

Still, she had just said he was going to be fine, which was good news really, no matter how oddly it was delivered.

"Of course I'm not sick," Tony said huffily, settling comfortably back into bravado now that it appeared the imminent danger was well and truly passed. "After all, I feel fine." He scratched the side of his face absently. McGee winced, looking as if he really hadn't wanted Tony to do that. Abby lowered her eyes and hunched her shoulders, like she was trying hard not to laugh.

"What?" Tony protested. As far as he could tell, the only thing wrong with his face was that it had felt a little hairier than usual. Okay, so he really needed to take care of his stubble as soon as they got back. There was no need for them to get all up in arms about it.

"It's, um…" McGee stumbled over his words. "It's not that simple, Tony." He kept blinking nervously and shaking his head, like the situation at hand had him well and truly overwhelmed. And there was no mistaking it; Abby was _giggling_ now, one hand held in front of her mouth as she tried to stifle the noise.

"_What?"_ Tony repeated, stressing the word with a little more urgency in his bewilderment. He was completely at a loss, and he wanted to know what in the world was going on.

"See, the gas…well, the bioterrorists didn't formulate it _quite_ the way they intended," Abby explained, composing herself fairly well. She couldn't quite fight off that unnerving little smile on her face, however, which Tony was starting to think was going to wind up making guest appearances in his nightmares if he didn't get this mystery wrapped up soon. "Instead of destroying DNA, it mutates it."

"Mutates?" Tony repeated blankly. He didn't remember very much of his high school biology, but he knew well enough to be fairly certain that, in a situation like this, "mutates" was _not_ a good word.

"You want to show him, Kate?" Abby didn't even try to hide her amusement this time as she turned towards a hospital bed directly across from Tony that he had been too distracted to notice. The curtains were completely drawn around the bed, hiding the occupant from view. Tony had to squint to make out the familiar silhouette of Kate Todd, sitting upright in the bed.

"Do I _have_ to?" Kate's voice was clipped, pained.

"Kate, he's going to find out eventually," McGee sighed, closing his eyes and tilting his head heavenward, looking like he was offering up a silent prayer for the angels to come down and take all this madness away.

"Going to find out what?" Tony leaned forward, narrowing his eyes practically into blindness as he struggled to make anything out. "What the heck is going _on_?" His heart was starting to pound away like a jackhammer. What was wrong with Kate? Abby had said he was fine, and he and Kate had been exposed to the same thing, so therefore Kate to be fine as well, right?

"All right, _fine_." Kate let out a sharp exhalation of breath, sounding like she was clenching her teeth especially hard. "I'll do it." There was a brief pause, during which she was most likely screwing up her resolution. Then in one quick move she reached out and yanked the curtain away.

There was dead silence as Tony just sat there and _stared_.

For the most part she still appeared to be Kate, except for a few minor and, to say the least, very interesting details.

Like, say, the addition of claws to the end of the fingers that gripped the sheets wrapped around her. Or the triangular ears that poked up through her hair at the top of her head. Or the dark brown fur that covered her entire body. Or the very interesting almond-shaped…dare he say it…_feline_ look her newly yellow eyes had taken on.

"Tony, I'm begging you," Kate mewed pleadingly, clutching the sheets a little tighter and shredding them slightly with her claws. "_Please_. Just don't say a _word_-"

"Oh…wow," Tony burst in, jaw dropping open. Kate immediately groaned, realizing it was too late. "_Wow_." He started to laugh, giving her a look that was half disbelief, half leer. "Or should I say 'meow'?" Kate bristled, which only made Tony leer harder. "Hello, Pussy Galore!"

"I swear to _God_, DiNozzo…" Kate spat, hissing at him in anger. She lifted one hand, baring her claws. "If you don't shut up right now, I'll…!" But Tony wasn't paying her any heed. His eyes had suddenly caught onto the sight of the furry brown…_something_…lashing back and forth behind her in the sheets.

Could it truly be?

"A _tail_," Tony cried, eyes widening in wonder and joy. "You have a tail!"

"Shut. _Up_." Kate glared death at him from across the room.

"I don't believe it," Tony breathed, finding it hard not to just let his mouth hang wide open and drool. "You're a _cat-girl_. Hello American male fantasy number twelve!"

"Cat-_woman_," Abby stressed helpfully. Tony went into a flat-out open-mouthed pant.

"Even better."

"You're _disgusting_." Kate scowled at him venomously.

"_What?_ I'm just telling the truth! Right, Probie?" Tony glanced over at McGee, who immediately launched into a truly remarkable impression of a deer trapped in the headlights of an oncoming truck.

"Oh _no_." McGee backed up, quickly waving his hands back and forth and shaking his head. "You guys leave me _out_ of this."

"Oh, don't worry Kate. Vengeance will be had." Abby smirked as she hid her mouth behind her curled fist. She was giggling again. "Tony still hasn't figured it out."

"Still haven't figured out what?" Tony asked distractedly, staring happily at Kate like she was a dream come true. Oh wait, she _was._ God, if only his fraternity brothers could see him now…

"I'm not the only one, Tony." Kate gave him a bitter smile. "Or weren't you listening to McGee? _You_ were exposed too."

"What are you talking about?" Tony said dreamily, not fully taking in what she was saying as he just looked at her and cheerfully wagged his tail.

Wait. _Wait_. What was that last part?

Tony's eyes went wide and he froze. After a minute he came perilously close to hog-tying himself in the sheets as he quickly tried to turn around to look behind him.

"Aha. I think he just got it." Kate gave a lazy, cold, "payback's a bitch" smile.

"What…what…" Tony whimpered, practically hyperventilating as he tried to grasp what was going on.

"Tony. _Tony_." McGee held out one hand beseechingly, his jitters quickly returning in light of this sudden turn of events. "J-just calm down, okay?"

"What the _hell?_" Tony howled, mind reeling.

"Okay, _stop_." Abby snapped her fingers, getting his attention. She finally sobered up, speaking to him in an even, soothing voice. "Just stop. It's gonna be okay, alright?"

"No. _No_." Tony grit his teeth and growled, sitting up straighter and glaring at them. McGee took a nervous step back. "You guys tell me what's going on _right now_." Abby and McGee exchanged a hesitant look.

"Um…um, uh…" McGee gulped. "Well…"

"Touch the end of your nose," Abby offered with a reluctant sigh.

"My _nose?_" Tony stared at her in disbelief, but his hand automatically rose to do it anyway. "Why do you want me to…?"

He immediately yanked his hand back once his goal was achieved, eyes wide with shock.

"Why," he asked, voice mounting with hysteria, "is my nose _cold_ and _wet_?"

"Um…" McGee gave a timid smile. "Because…you're healthy?"

There was a dead silence for a few minutes, after which Tony finally spoke again in a low, flat voice.

"A mirror."

"I, uh, don't think that's really a good idea right now," McGee quickly protested, eyes widening nervously. "I think you should wait until-"

Here you go," Kate said with a nasty smile, tossing a compact mirror in Tony's direction, which he caught deftly with one hand. "Take a good _long_ look at yourself, DiNozzo."

And before either McGee or Abby could stop him, Tony opened the mirror and looked at his reflection.

* * *

"-turn them inside out and use them for _shoe-strings!_" Gibbs paused for a moment, catching his breath. "And that, Tobias, _that_ is what I'm going to do to you if I find out that you knew _anything _about this!" 

"Jethro, _please_," Fornell protested. His voice was soft, not so much because he was trying to calm the NCIS special agent as because it was unnecessary to speak any louder, since the current position of Gibbs' face was directly in front of his with less than an inch between them. "I'm telling you, my people knew nothing about the failsafe device!"

"It wouldn't be the first time you've withheld information from me, Fornell." Gibbs' voice was also soft, but in a way that was much more deadly. "How do I know your team just figured it was fair payback for us taking the case?"

"Please," Fornell scoffed at the idea. He shook his head in irritation. "I don't understand what you're so upset about anyway. From what I understand, the bioterrorists accidentally mangled the gas' composition so that it was perfectly harmless."

Anything else Fornell would have liked to say was quickly cut off by the action of Gibbs seizing him by the front of the shirt and slamming his back into the wall.

"Harmless? _Harmless?"_ Gibbs gripped him tightly, shaking him. "Your _harmless_ gas turned two of my agents into circus freaks!"

"I think you're exaggerating," Fornell protested.

"_They're covered in fur!"_

"So what? I hear it's making a comeback this year."

Gibbs stared at the FBI agent and said nothing, clearly deep in thought as to which of the many ways at his disposal would be the best to kill him.

The decision process, however, was cut off midway by the sound of a horrified scream from down the hall. Gibbs immediately released Fornell, leaving the other man to collide painfully with the wall, and rushed towards the source of the cry. Within less than a minute he had reached the door to the closed hospital room and threw it open, charging inside.

"What's going on?" he demanded furiously. McGee hurried over, looking glad to see him.

If he was actually glad to see _Gibbs_, then the situation at hand must have been well and truly bad.

"Tony just, uh…" McGee sighed, looking pained. "He got a good look at his reflection."

Ah. Well, that explained the scream he had heard. Not to mention the low whimpering now coming from one side of the room.

"Not so funny now is it, huh Tony?" Kate said vehemently. Gibbs stole a glance over at her. She was kneeling in her bed, leaning forward as she gripped the metal bars of the bedpost at the end tightly with her hands. Her tail lashed back and forth agitatedly behind her. "Go on Fido, laugh it up."

This was no way to end an investigation, really.

Gibbs followed the path of Kate's yellow cat-eyes and found the current target of her anger to be a quivering lump of bed sheets in the opposite hospital bed, roughly the size and shape of DiNozzo. From somewhere beneath the sheets came the whimpering noise Gibbs had picked up on earlier. Abby stood beside the bed, talking to the shaking bed sheet pile in her best soothing voice.

"Shhh…it's okay, Tony. It's going to be okay."

"Is _not_," Tony sniffled miserably. "My face, my beautiful face…!"

"Personally, I think it's an improvement." Kate smirked, her eyes narrowing in that lazily cruel expression that only cats could seem to pull off successfully. "At least now you have animal magnetism."

"Shut up, Miss Kitty!" Tony growled at her angrily. The sheet slipped slightly, and if Gibbs looked hard enough he could just make out a pair of green eyes and a black nose.

"Serves you right, Rover!" Kate retorted. "After all the grief you gave me earlier about how _I_ look-"

"That's enough out of both of you," Gibbs snapped, bringing the fight to a stop before it even really started. Kate glanced up him, ears perking. DiNozzo also looked over him, or at least Gibbs assumed he did. The bed sheets seemed to twist in his general direction in any case.

Gibbs sighed, slowly counted to ten, and did a brief mental calculation on how much Jack Daniels there was left in his basement.

"DiNozzo, lose the bed sheet," he finally said wearily. Tony made a nervous keening noise and seemed to shrink in further.

"Boss, do I have to?"

"I already _saw_," Gibbs informed him wearily. "I stopped by earlier when you were still unconscious."

"Oh." Tony gulped nervously, and then finally reached up to pull the sheet back from his head, revealing a furry light brown face with a miserable expression. Gibbs knew he should probably say something, but there weren't many words that came to mind that really worked for this situation.

"It's not so bad," he finally offered half-heartedly. Tony's ears drooped.

"'_Not so bad'?_" He repeated incredulously. "_Look _at me!" He stared down in horror at a pair of hands that were thickly padded and covered in fur. "I look like Lon Chaney Jr.!"

"You're not a _werewolf_, Tony," Abby corrected politely. "Just a dog."

"If you ask me, you haven't really changed at all," Kate huffed. "You're just the same as always: a miserable, mangy mutt." Tony growled at her.

"I _knew_ there was a reason I hated cats." He leaned forward on the end of his bed frame to glare at her. Kate hissed back in reply. Suddenly, Tony stopped, his ears perking as thought of something.

"Come to think of it, Gibbs does too." He glanced over at Gibbs hopefully, his tail starting to give a little wag. "Right, boss?"

"Uh…" The truthful answer to that was "yes", but the mortified, pleading look Kate was giving him right now made that probably not the right thing to say. "They're okay," Gibbs reassured her lamely.

"Yeah, but you've always been more of a dog man, right?" Tony was looking at him intently now, tongue hanging out of the corner of his mouth, tail wagging furiously back and forth. "Right, boss? I mean, if you don't like cats then you've gotta like dogs, that's just the way it works. So-"

"DiNozzo, _sit_," Gibbs commanded sharply. Tony immediately shut his mouth and obediently sat back down.

Then again, maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.

"Good job, Gibbs." Kate smiled sweetly at Tony. "And from now on, whenever he's bad you can hit him with a rolled-up newspaper."

"_Hey!"_

"Boss, what are we going to _do?_" McGee beseeched, looking at Gibbs desperately. Gibbs wearily put one hand to his brow and shook his head. Before he could actually come out and admit he hadn't the slightest idea, however, Abby spoke up.

"Well first, we're probably going to have to make a stop at the vet's," she said thoughtfully, putting one hand to her chin.

"What?" Tony yelped, tail drooping and ears flattening back against his head.

"You are not taking me to a _vet,_" Kate yowled, eyes widening with fear and her tail fluffing up.

"Very funny, Abby," McGee said tiredly.

"I'm serious, McGee." Abby looked up at him with wide eyes. "Proper vaccination is one of the most important steps of pet ownership!"

"_What?"_ Tony gave her a wide-eyed look of horror and betrayal, like…well, like she had just kicked him outside on a cold and rainy night.

"Abbs…" Gibbs began in his warning voice.

"Just don't forget to get Tony neutered," Kate spat caustically. Tony gave a very pronounced whimper and lowered his hands protectively.

"Tony, I _wouldn't_," Abby quickly reassured him. Tony relaxed, and then quickly shifted to glaring murder at Kate.

"But you should probably get Kate de-clawed," he announced, baring his teeth at her, "for our own protection." Kate hissed and curled her fingers at him.

"I'd like to see you _try!_"

"Can we please put a stop to this sometime _before_ DiNozzo chases Kate up a tree?" Gibbs demanded in irritation, feeling the definite warning signs of a headache coming on.

"I would _not,_" Tony protested.

"Yes, you would," Kate sneered. Tony glowered at her.

"Yeah well, I think it says more about you, anyway." He gave her a smug grin. "I always figured you were the sort to climb up a tree when you didn't know how to get down again."

Gibbs wasn't sure quite what happened, but then next thing he knew a large blur of dark brown had leapt the distance from Kate's bed to Tony's in a single bound, and the contents of the bed quickly dissolved in a rolling tangled mess of fur from which loud angry barking and furious hisses were emitted.

"Oh _God_." McGee buried his head in his hands.

"No! _No._ Stop!" Abby quickly rushed over to the bed and stood over the two agents who were deeply embroiled in combat. She shook her finger at them and spoke in an even, scolding tone. "_Stop. _Bad Tony! Bad Kate! _Bad!_" Finally, she managed to grab each of them by the scruffs of their necks and pull them apart. "Very, very _bad!_"

"She _scratched _me!" Tony snapped gesturing to a short series of bloody lines on his left cheek.

"Well, he _bit_ me!" Kate retorted, showing off a set of teeth marks on her wrist.

"That's _enough_," Gibbs ordered. Tony turned to look at him pleadingly.

"But _boss…!"_

"Shhh," Abby hushed him quietly. "It's okay." When Tony looked like he was about to protest to her, she calmly begin rubbing him on the belly. Immediately, Tony's eyes half-closed in a blissed-out expression, and he happily flopped down onto his back and allowed her to continue.

"Hey!" Kate looked scandalized.

"What's the matter Kate, jealous?" Tony asked lazily, then closed his eyes with a happy sigh. "Mmm, oh yeah Abbs, right there…" His left leg started twitching.

"I can't _believe_ you'd sell out for a-" Before Kate could finish Abby reached over and scratched her behind the ear with her free hand. Kate started to protest, but then her eyes closed as a pleasured expression passed over her face. "Mmph. That feels _good_." She leaned closer to Abby's hand, a purring sound coming from deep in her throat.

"This is so _cool_," Abby determined happily, looking back and forth between Tony under her left hand and Kate at her right. "My parents never let me have pets when I was growing up."

"You gonna buy Kate a cute little collar with a bell?" Tony sniggered.

"I guess yours would have spikes on it, huh?" Kate returned dryly.

"Like I'd _ever_ wear a collar," Tony scoffed.

"Uh, actually Tony, I think you might have to," McGee corrected timidly, moving towards the bed. "D.C.'s got some pretty strict leash laws."

"Ha!" Kate gave a snort of laughter as Tony opened his eyes to give McGee a dirty look.

"What do you say, Gibbs?" The older man looked up at the sound of Abby's voice, startled. "Can we keep them?" She gave Gibbs her best puppy-dog eyed look.

For a second Gibbs just stared at her blankly. He looked over at DiNozzo, who was panting happily, his tail thumping loudly against the bed as he wagged it with all his might. He looked over at Kate, who was arching her back as she rubbed the side of her head against Abby's hand and purred loudly.

On the one hand, it was insanity of the highest degree. What he really should be doing is breaking down the doors of scientists and _demanding_ they get his agents back to normal.

On the other hand, he could use Kate to intimidate suspects with her stare and train Tony to fetch his slippers.

Gibbs slowly shook his head, turning around as he quickly left the room.

"I need coffee."


End file.
